The Movie Review: 'Serenity'

Serenity,
writer/director Joss Whedon's exuberant space opera, opens with one nod
to the power of love and closes with another: the first concerns a
brother's affection for his sister; the second, a captain's for his
spaceship. (Tellingly, the latter is, if anything, more touching.) The
two scenes form an apt pair of bookends because, to the extent this can
ever be said of a major Hollywood release, Serenity is a product
of love--that of fans of "Firefly," the cancelled TV series from which
the film was spun off, of the cast, and most of all of Whedon himself.

Following the successes of his cult hits "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
and "Angel," in 2002 Whedon left the horror-comedy realm to launch
"Firefly," a picaresque, Western-themed sci-fi series that followed the
interplanetary wanderings of Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a former
soldier in an unsuccessful interplanetary rebellion, and the crew of his
ship, Serenity. (The movie is named for the vessel, which in
turn was named for a battle Mal fought in--none of which could be
accurately described as "serene.") Created for Fox, "Firefly" was
Whedon's first big-network experience ("Buffy" and "Angel" aired on the
WB and UPN), and it wasn't a happy one. In their inscrutable wisdom,
network executives decided to air the series out of sequence; when it
struggled to find an audience, they pulled the plug after eleven
episodes.

But, as fans of "Buffy" and "Angel" know, Whedon has a penchant for
bringing things back from the dead. "Buffy" itself was raised from the
ashes of the eponymous movie, for which Whedon had written the
screenplay. Unhappy with the way his dark comedy had been lightened
during rewrites, he resurrected his heroine for the small screen.
"Firefly" faced the opposite--and more difficult--challenge of
persuading a studio to back a film based on a cancelled series. But
while the show's audience was small, it was committed. Calling
themselves "browncoats"--after the defeated rebel forces in
"Firefly"--they wrote letters and showed up at sci-fi conventions and,
when finally given the opportunity, voted with their wallets: When a DVD
set of the entire season was released in late 2003, it vastly outsold
expectations. That windfall, and Whedon's perseverance (he'd even kept
several of his cast members employed with stints as villains on "Buffy"
and "Angel"), persuaded Universal to bite on a $40-million feature-film
adaptation.

And thank goodness. Serenity, released on video last week, is terrific. By turns witty and harrowing, clever and weighty, it is closer in spirit to Star Wars
than anything George Lucas has produced in a quarter century. Like the
spaceship for which it is named (or, for that matter, Han Solo's Millennium Falcon), Serenity
is pleasantly rough around the edges: In this universe, dust and debris
are omnipresent, guns still fire old-fashioned bullets, and heroes are
more apt to be petty crooks than selfless monks. (In fact, here it's the
bad guy who's the latter.) It's a refreshing change from the hermetic,
CGI airlessness and ponderous sanctimony that has characterized the last
three Star Wars pics. Even when Mal gets his Big Speech, it concludes on a note as roguish as it is resolute: "I aim to misbehave."

One of the challenges of bringing a series like "Firefly" to the big
screen is introducing the show's history and main characters--there are
nine of them--without loads of painful, expository dialogue. Whedon
manages it with a wicked bit of narrative jujitsu in which a schoolroom
history lesson is violently subverted--it is, in fact, the nightmare of a
girl undergoing psychological experimentation in a lab--and then that
subversion is itself subverted. In the course of this triple gainer, we
learn that humanity has relocated to a new star system with dozens of
terraformed planets, ruled with quasi-benevolent tyranny by a government
called the Alliance. We're also introduced to River Tam (Summer Glau),
the young psychic on whom the Alliance doctors are experimenting; her
surgeon brother Simon (Sean Maher), who rescues her from their clutches;
and the nameless Alliance operative sent to bring her back, a gentle-voiced assassin played with understated elegance
by Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things, Melinda and Melinda). From there we jump to the ship Serenity,
where River and Simon have found uneasy refuge, for a fore-to-aft
Steadicam stroll that introduces Mal and the rest of the crew--all in
the course of a potentially lethal crash landing. ("We may experience
some slight turbulence," Mal warns over the intercom, "and then
explode.")

And that's just in the movie's first 15 minutes. The crew will next
indulge in a good-natured stickup that is interrupted by the unexpected
arrival of a pack of Reavers, semi-human cannibals addicted to rape,
murder, and sewing their victims' skins into clothing. There will be
revelations about River's untapped abilities ("Buffy" fans will be
unsurprised to learn that among them is an aptitude for spinning
back-kicks to the face) and the secret locked in her head which the
Alliance is so eager to keep from getting out, something about a planet
called "Miranda." (Hint: It has to do with Shakespeare's Miranda in The Tempest, who gave us the phrase "brave new world.") As Serenity
unfolds, it deepens from picaresque to epic, from comedy to
near-tragedy. By the end, the movie has become a rumination on order
versus chaos, the pursuit of perfection, and the inevitability of sin.
But don't fret: Such meditations are squeezed in between some
exceptionally boss battle scenes.

Serenity has, in other words, pretty much everything you can
ask for in an action-adventure movie. Unfortunately, it lacked two key
ingredients for box-office success: bankable stars and a
big-league marketing budget. (It couldn't have helped that Serenity
is probably the most counterintuitive title for an action blockbuster
in cinematic history.) Though it was made for a relatively modest $40
million--and the reviews were overwhelmingly positive--it
pulled in a mere $25 million in U.S. theaters, a small fraction of the
booty earned by such sloppy, self-satisfied summer extravagances as Episode III, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and War of the Worlds.

Still, as Whedon and his "Firefly" cohorts have already shown,
there's more than one way to skin a human (and sew him into a nice
little Reaver ensemble). Theatrical box-office makes up an
ever-shrinking portion of a film's total receipts (now a mere 15
percent, according to Slate's Edward Jay Epstein),
with the vast bulk of the revenues coming from DVD sales and rentals on
the one hand, and broadcast licensing (pay-per-view, network, and
cable) on the other. And while Serenity was never well-positioned
for the box office, it should, like "Firefly" before it, make a killing
on DVD. (My own exceptionally scientific survey of a couple of local
outlets would tend to confirm this: By day two of its release, Serenity
had sold out from one and was only available in the less-popular
fullscreen version from the other.) Once the movie hits cable, it should
be set for life--I envision it running three nights a week on the
Sci-Fi Channel for at least the next decade. Will this be enough to
ensure a sequel? You can cast your own vote at the local Blockbuster.

The Home Movies List: Short Runs

"Greg the Bunny" (2002). Fox nabbed the puppets-behaving-badly sitcom (a kind of PG-13 version of Peter Jackson's Meet the Feebles)
from the Independent Film Channel, then promptly cancelled it. At least
the characters were able to come back to IFC for a "reunion" episode
and a few spoofs of popular movies earlier this year.

"Boomtown" (2002-2003). A clever (occasionally too clever) multiple-POV police drama
in which storylines collided with dizzying force. When the first season
drew meager ratings (despite excellent reviews), the network flattened
the show out for season two, before pulling the plug just a few episodes
in. It's a shame, too: It was nice to be reminded that not all crime
drama has to fit the "CSI"-"Law & Order" mold.

"Firefly" (2002-2003). The show is not quite as strong as the
movie (the latter better captures the sharp wit, unexpected reversals,
and encroaching tragedy that characterized the best of "Buffy" and
"Angel"), but it is strong nonetheless, and an excellent opportunity to
see Whedon's characters and storylines unfold at a more leisurely pace.
It also gives Serenity--which is essentially a sequel--a deeper resonance, especially when a few regular cast members meet their ends.

"Arrested Development" (2003-2006). Credit Fox with taking
chances on some of the most inventive shows in recent network history.
Credit it, too, with ruthlessly pulling the plug, often after
broadcasting them out of sequence and on irregular schedules. The latest
casualty was the funniest sitcom in a decade,
which miraculously survived for more than two-and-a-half seasons before
apparently getting the ax last month. Though not yet officially
cancelled, it had its season abruptly "shortened," and subsequent
episodes have been shown at erratic intervals, interspersed with random
reruns and other programming. Whatever its ultimate fate (a reprieve?
new life on Showtime?), there are still a couple of this season's
episodes left. Addicts like me will be laughing through the tears.

This post originally appeared at TNR.com.

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